


Reverium

by BuchananBarnes (forever_doodling_tardises)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Grantaire Wakes Up Too Late AU meets Hunger Games AU basically, Hunger Games, M/M, POV Grantaire, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 03:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2676701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forever_doodling_tardises/pseuds/BuchananBarnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only end of the Hunger Games Grantaire saw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverium

Grantaire stumbled through the square, still-fuzzy vision not improved by the pouring rain. What happened? He had been asleep under an overhang for what felt like a week, sleeping off the effects of the medicine he hadn’t needed to take so much of. Enjolras will break our damn alliance when he finds out I wasted it, Grantaire thought. Then he thought about what he’d said and panic began to rise in his throat. _Enjolras!_ A cry was ripped from his throat. “Enjolras!” Nobody responded. He begun to move at a shambling run, urgent, terrified, yet unable to control his own body. He ran past the place where Eponine, the melancholy female tribute from District 12, and her younger brother Gavroche, had died; and a fresher bloodstain left by Bahorel, one of the District 2s, who had unexpectedly allied himself with Enjolras. _Enjolras!_ Grantaire’s brain reminded him to keep moving.

The arena this year, a rickety ghost town, provided slick cobblestones for Grantaire to slip on. He rushed through the main room of the building they’d used as their hideout - past more reminders of death. Knives belonging to the girl who’d killed Eponine - he still didn’t know her name - from District 2. Arrows that were Jehan's from District 11. He wanted to gag, he wanted to jump out a window, he wanted to drink until he passed out. He wanted to do anything but keep going, but that’s what he did. “Enjolras?” he screamed, but there was a doubt in his voice now. A doubt for this man he’d never doubted, the only thing he’d ever believed in, the cause he would die for. His eyes darted across the bodies on the stairs. No Enjolras. He threw open the door at the top of the stairs and, at last, found Enjolras. Dead, shot through by a dozen or more arrows.

Grantaire felt sicker than ever, knees threatening to buckle in earnest. It was Enjolras who had insisted he sleep across the square. Grantaire had protested, wanting to simply fall down on the floor of this room. If he had, maybe he could have woken up. Maybe he could have saved Enjolras. Maybe he would at least be lying beside him. “Enjolras!” He was still screaming, though he knew it would do no good. Enjolras had been the only one he’d put his faith in, and now he was gone. Grantaire wished he himself were gone, it would be better than living after witnessing all he had witnessed. Sure, there would be glory. Meaningless Capital gestures. Riches stained with the blood of those fallen in his place. No, he decided, he would not be crowned victor. As he thought this, a cannon went off. For a moment, he thought, Enjolras, and rushed towards him. Then, out of the corner of his eye and through the window that Enjolras had narrowly escaped falling out of, he saw that the figure that he hadn’t noticed walking across the square had dropped to the grimy cobbles into a puddle, still convulsing. Which meant... he thought back to the cannons he’d heard, the bodies he’d seen since day one. There were three tributes left. Himself, Cosette Fauchelevent of District 11, and Marius Pontmercy of District 1. An odd chuckle rose in his throat. The two lovers, forced to fight to the death. The viewership must be enthralled.

You have to realize that all this thinking and bitterness and screaming and dying took place in a little under fifteen seconds. That was the time it took for Grantaire to realize: if that had not been Enjolras’ cannon…

His eyes widened. Enjolras was still alive! _He probably won’t be soon,_ said the voice in Grantaire’s head, the guiding skeptic that he tended to follow. Indeed, he showed no sign of life, eyes closed, but for the faint flutter of his chest. Still, Grantaire settled beside him, grasping the dying man’s hand with his own. He racked his brain, trying to think of something he could do to comfort Enjolras. He remembered the song that Marius had sung to Eponine. Struggling to bring it to mind, he managed only a few lines.

 

_“A little fall of rain_

_Can hardly hurt you now”_

 

Enjolras’ eyes, his improbable-hued eyes, fluttered open. They still flickered with their intrinsic flame, but only just. His hand tightened around Grantaire’s for a moment. Grantaire wished that he could take away all Enjolras’ pain and absorb it into himself. Instead, he kept singing.

 

_“I’m here_

_And I will stay with you_

_‘Til you are sleeping”_

 

Enjolras’ eyes began to close. Grantaire’s voice started shaking on, it seemed, exactly the same curve.

 

_“And rain will make the flowers…”_

 

The fire in Enjolras’ eyes died, blown out as though by an unseen wind. Grantaire didn’t have the heart to finish the song. Instead, as the cannon rang out, he shouted into the air, as loudly as he possibly could: “He is not the last to fall! Many more will follow in these Hunger Games! But remember him: his name was Enjolras. His life was cold and dark, yet he was unafraid. I fought here in his name! He will not die in vain. Nor will his cause be betrayed!”

His last few words were drowned out by the sound of the hovercraft that had come to take away Enjolras’ body. It wasn’t so much the hovercraft itself making a racket as its ugly claw, crashing through the roof of the building, splintering the wooden walls. Despite the demolishment of his surroundings, Grantaire had no desire to move out of the danger zone. Instead, on the spur of the moment, he jumped and grabbed hold of the claw as it was withdrawing.

He hung on for a few hundred feet, even as they sent an electric shock through the metal. Then, at about 300, one word popped into his head suddenly, he wasn’t sure from where. But he knew, on impulse, that he should voice it. He did, just a whisper into the increasing hiss of the engines. “Reverium.”

Then he let go. Forty-six seconds later, another cannon sounded. 

**Author's Note:**

> on the day i wrote this, i woke up and whispered "Reverium". i still have no idea why, but i was getting a Hunger Games vibe and an ExR vibe, so.
> 
> edit: holy SHIT im so sorry the part where grantaire sees people's dead bodies has been fixed i have no idea what i was thinking jfc of course there wouldnt be bodies im ashamed


End file.
